Improving student performance and reducing gun violence were the main topics of a youth forum hosted by the Gainesville Alumni Chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Inc.
The “Gangs, Guns and Grades” youth forum featured an interactive discussion with panelists that included law enforcement, juvenile justice and education professionals.
“We’re here this morning to discuss things going on with our youth in the community and to form solutions to solve these problems,” said Boderick Johnson, a chapter member who moderated the forum.
The panel featured Eastside High School Principal Leroy Williams; Terrance Watkins, an official with the juvenile justice department in the Eighth Judicial Circuit; Sean Lewertow, a fraternity member and senior studying computer science and artificial intelligence at the University of Florida; Omar Jennings, an academic advisor at Santa Fe College; and former Gainesville Police Chief Lonnie Scott, who is also a fraternity member.
Preventative measures dominated the discussion, with parent involvement and community support leading the conversation about how best to solve the problems.
Addressing the challenges faced by at-risk teens begins at home, said Williams, who also emphasized that teachers and school officials should remain accessible to students at all times to help them feel safe.
Watkins added that creating a sense of safety and protection is crucial to keeping kids out of the juvenile justice system.
“By the times kids get to us, they are already in the system,” Watkins said.
Who teens associate with matters because they often mirror the behaviors of those around them, Watkins told nearly two dozen Kappa League members, along with parents, family members, and community leaders attending the meeting
Kappa League, of which Johnson is the committee chair, is a male youth mentoring program sponsored by the Kappas.
Watkins said involvement in gangs starts with criminal activity that leads to kids being exposed to the criminal justice system that often “becomes a revolving door if young people continue to associate themselves with the wrong people,”
“It’s like building blocks. Once you get involved in one thing, it’s going to lead to other things,” Watkins said.
Finances and a lack of empathy from the community also lead to the prevalence of gangs, gun violence and low academic achievement in the Black community, Jennings said.
Black youth need to see more people who look like them leading productive lives and in roles of leadership, Jennings said, adding that there are a lot of those people in the community that kids are not sometimes readily exposed to in their everyday lives.
“There is no reason to fail in this society,” Jennings said. “We (adults) must be able to communicate to them that we were just like them and come from where they come from.”
Overcoming the obstacles of being raised in challenging circumstances is possible but requires being disciplined and wanting something better for themselves, Scott told the youth.
Growing up in the Liberty City section of Miami surrounded by drugs and a lot of violence, which included him losing two brothers to gun violence, Scott told the youth that he decided early in his life to choose a different path.
Getting accepted into UF in the mid-1970s motivated him even more to succeed, aided by a white professor telling him he couldn’t be successful at UF, Scott said.
After graduating from college, Scott said he started from the bottom at GPD then worked himself into leadership positions throughout his nearly 40-year career in law enforcement. Scott, who retired from GPD in February 2024, added that youth gun violence prevention was important to him throughout his career.
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